Fire spotters need support

Looking out for fires isn't cheap, especially if you're doing it from several thousand feet up.

"The expense has gone up and the money has dwindled," said Mike Smith, the main pilot for the Mendocino County Cooperative Aerial Fire Patrol, a fire protection effort funded by private landowners.

"They pay 6.4 cents an acre a year," said Smith, who will begin making daily flights come Aug. 1, spending about four to five hours in the air, making a large figure eight across the county and looking for smoke.

"We have the best vantage point - - from every point you can see the whole county," Smith said. "We're the lookout tower -- a mobile lookout tower."

Bill Smith and Jack Sweeney, who have been involved with the co-op since the 1950s, described it as a non-profit group of volunteers that has been operating for 64 "uninterrupted years."

"And it's even more important now because we have no (stationary) lookouts," Smith said, explaining that Mike Smith's contract starts Aug. 1, but "we leave it up to (the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Cal Fire, which oversees the co-op's operations) to tell us when it's critical."

Bill Smith said the lightning storms earlier this month that sparked 13 fires is an example of how necessary air spotters are. Mike Smith said because of the fire danger, his contract usually includes the weekend of July Fourth.

"None of the fires got bigger than one acre," Bill Smith said. "We get to them before they get away."

The cooperative depends on members to voluntarily pay in, and Smith said "we're about $8,000 buck short this year. I don't want it to end up on Oct. 1 with it still dry, still windy and we're out of money."

"It's a philosophical arrangement," Sweeney said. "Because the property owners are not only protecting their property, but the property of their neighbors and the land."

For more information about the co-op, contact Jann Smith at 459-7407, or Cal Fire Battalion Chief Terry Guerrero at 462-6102.

Justine Frederiksen can be reached at udjjf@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @JustFrederiksen or at 468-3521.